Architecture for text normalization using statistical machine translation techniques

This paper proposes an architecture, based on statistical machine translation, for developing the text normalization module of a text to speech conversion system. The main target is to generate a language independent text normalization module, based on data and flexible enough to deal with all situa-tions presented in this task. The proposed architecture is composed by three main modules: a tokenizer module for splitting the text input into a token graph (tokenization), a phrase-based translation module (token translation) and a post-processing module for removing some tokens. This paper presents initial exper-iments for numbers and abbreviations. The very good results obtained validate the proposed architecture.

Detecting acronyms from capital letter sequences in Spanish

This paper presents an automatic strategy to decide how to pronounce a Capital Letter Sequence (CLS) in a Text to Speech system (TTS). If CLS is well known by the TTS, it can be expanded in several words. But when the CLS is unknown, the system has two alternatives: spelling it (abbreviation) or pronouncing it as a new word (acronym). In Spanish, there is a high relationship between letters and phonemes. Because of this, when a CLS is similar to other words in Spanish, there is a high tendency to pronounce it as a standard word. This paper proposes an automatic method for detecting acronyms. Additionaly, this paper analyses the discrimination capability of some features, and several strategies for combining them in order to obtain the best classifier. For the best classifier, the classification error is 8.45%. About the feature analysis, the best features have been the Letter Sequence Perplexity and the Average N-gram order.

UPM system for WMT 2012

This paper describes the UPM system for the Spanish-English translation task at the NAACL 2012 workshop on statistical machine translation. This system is based on Moses. We have used all available free corpora, cleaning and deleting some repetitions. In this paper, we also propose a technique for selecting the sentences for tuning the system. This technique is based on the similarity with the sentences to translate. With our approach, we improve the BLEU score from 28.37% to 28.57%. And as a result of the WMT12 challenge we have obtained a 31.80% BLEU with the 2012 test set. Finally, we explain different experiments that we have carried out after the competition.

Language identification based on a discriminative text categorization technique

In this paper, we describe new results and improvements to a lan-guage identification (LID) system based on PPRLM previously introduced in [1] and [2]. In this case, we use as parallel phone recognizers the ones provided by the Brno University of Technology for Czech, Hungarian, and Russian lan-guages, and instead of using traditional n-gram language models we use a lan-guage model that is created using a ranking with the most frequent and discrim-inative n-grams. In this language model approach, the distance between the ranking for the input sentence and the ranking for each language is computed, based on the difference in relative positions for each n-gram. This approach is able to model reliably longer span information than in traditional language models obtaining more reliable estimations. We also describe the modifications that we have being introducing along the time to the original ranking technique, e.g., different discriminative formulas to establish the ranking, variations of the template size, the suppression of repeated consecutive phones, and a new clus-tering technique for the ranking scores. Results show that this technique pro-vides a 12.9% relative improvement over PPRLM. Finally, we also describe re-sults where the traditional PPRLM and our ranking technique are combined.

Architecture for Text Sign Localization and Recognition

This paper describes a low complexity strategy for detecting and recognizing text signs automatically. Traditional approaches use large image algorithms for detecting the text sign, followed by the application of an Optical Character Recognition (OCR) algorithm in the previously identified areas. This paper proposes a new architecture that applies the OCR to a whole lightly treated image and then carries out the text detection process of the OCR output. The strategy presented in this paper significantly reduces the processing time required for text localization in an image, while guaranteeing a high recognition rate. This strategy will facilitate the incorporation of video processing-based applications into the automatic detection of text sign similar to that of a smartphone. These applications will increase the autonomy of visually impaired people in their daily life.

Methodology for developing a Speech into Sign Language Translation System in a New Semantic Domain

This paper proposes a methodology for developing a speech into sign language translation system considering a user-centered strategy. This method-ology consists of four main steps: analysis of technical and user requirements, data collection, technology adaptation to the new domain, and finally, evalua-tion of the system. The two most demanding tasks are the sign generation and the translation rules generation. Many other aspects can be updated automatical-ly from a parallel corpus that includes sentences (in Spanish and LSE: Lengua de Signos Española) related to the application domain. In this paper, we explain how to apply this methodology in order to develop two translation systems in two specific domains: bus transport information and hotel reception.

Developing an information system for deaf

This paper presents the SAILSE Project (Sistema Avanzado de Información en Lengua de Signos Española ? Spanish Sign Language Advanced Information System). This project aims to develop an interactive system for facilitating the communication between a hearing and a deaf person. The first step has been the linguistic study, including a sentence collection, its translation into LSE (Lengua de Signos Española - Spanish Sign Language), and sign generation. After this analysis, the paper describes the interactive system that integrates an avatar to represent the signs, a text to speech converter and several translation technologies. Finally, this paper presents the set up carried out with deaf people and the main conclusions extracted from it.

Adapting a speech into sign language translation system to a new domain

This paper presents a methodology for adapting an advanced communication system for deaf people in a new domain. This methodology is a user-centered design approach consisting of four main steps: requirement analysis, parallel corpus generation, technology adaptation to the new domain, and finally, system evaluation. In this paper, the new considered domain has been the dialogues in a hotel reception. With this methodology, it was possible to develop the system in a few months, obtaining very good performance: good speech recognition and translation rates (around 90%) with small processing times.

Multilingual number transcription for text-to-speech conversion

This paper describes the text normalization module of a text to speech fully-trainable conversion system and its application to number transcription. The main target is to generate a language independent text normalization module, based on data instead of on expert rules. This paper proposes a general architecture based on statistical machine translation techniques. This proposal is composed of three main modules: a tokenizer for splitting the text input into a token graph, a phrase-based translation module for token translation, and a post-processing module for removing some tokens. This architecture has been evaluated for number transcription in several languages: English, Spanish and Romanian. Number transcription is an important aspect in the text normalization problem.

Propagación del sonido en las iglesias prerrománicas

El presente proyecto tiene como objetivo el estudio de la propagación del sonido en las iglesias prerrománicas. Para ello, se analizarán y aplicarán algunas de las teorías más relevantes de propagación del sonido, con el fin de concluir si, alguna de ellas, se puede establecer como modelo de propagación en estos espacios. Se partirá de valores medidos in situ en diversas iglesias prerrománicas de la geografía española, siendo este un número considerado suficiente para poder valorar los resultados como significativos. Estas iglesias son: - San Cebrián - San Juan de Baños - San Pedro de la Nave - Santa María de Melque - Santa Lucía del Trampal El proyecto se valdrá de los siguientes parámetros acústicos para llevar a cabo el estudio: la Claridad Musical, C80, y la Sonoridad, G. El trabajo se centrará en tres teorías de propagación del sonido en el interior de recintos: • “La Teoría Clásica” • “Modelo de Barron y Lee” • “Método μ “ A partir de estas teorías, se obtendrán los valores, de forma teórica, para de C80 y G y se llevará a cabo una comparativa con los valores empíricos. ABSTRACT The aim of this project is to study the sound propagation in Pre-Romanesque churches. Hence, some of the most relevant sound propagation theories will be analyzed and applied, in order to conclude whether, any of them, can be set as a propagation model in this typology of spaces. On site measured values will be taken in different Pre-Romanesque churches in the Spanish geography, being the number of churches enough to evaluate if the results are significant. These churches are: - San Cebrián - San Juan de Baños - San Pedro de la Nave - Santa María de Melque - Santa Lucía del Trampal The following acoustic parameters will be used to perform the study: the musical clarity, C80, and the sound strength. G. The research will focus on three sound propagation theories in closed spaces: • “Classic Theory” • “Barron & Lee model” • μ Method Trough these theories, theoretical values will be derived, for C80 and G, being compared to the empirical values obtained on site.

Diseño, desarrollo y evaluación de sistemas de traducción automática para reducir las barreras de comunicación de las personas sordas

La principal aportación de esta tesis doctoral ha sido la propuesta y evaluación de un sistema de traducción automática que permite la comunicación entre personas oyentes y sordas. Este sistema está formado a su vez por dos sistemas: un traductor de habla en español a Lengua de Signos Española (LSE) escrita y que posteriormente se representa mediante un agente animado; y un generador de habla en español a partir de una secuencia de signos escritos mediante glosas. El primero de ellos consta de un reconocedor de habla, un módulo de traducción entre lenguas y un agente animado que representa los signos en LSE. El segundo sistema está formado por una interfaz gráfica donde se puede especificar una secuencia de signos mediante glosas (palabras en mayúscula que representan los signos), un módulo de traducción entre lenguas y un conversor texto-habla. Para el desarrollo del sistema de traducción, en primer lugar se ha generado un corpus paralelo de 7696 frases en español con sus correspondientes traducciones a LSE. Estas frases pertenecen a cuatro dominios de aplicación distintos: la renovación del Documento Nacional de Identidad, la renovación del permiso de conducir, un servicio de información de autobuses urbanos y la recepción de un hotel. Además, se ha generado una base de datos con más de 1000 signos almacenados en cuatro sistemas distintos de signo-escritura. En segundo lugar, se ha desarrollado un módulo de traducción automática que integra dos técnicas de traducción con una estructura jerárquica: la primera basada en memoria y la segunda estadística. Además, se ha implementado un módulo de pre-procesamiento de las frases en español que, mediante su incorporación al módulo de traducción estadística, permite mejorar significativamente la tasa de traducción. En esta tesis también se ha mejorado la versión de la interfaz de traducción de LSE a habla. Por un lado, se han incorporado nuevas características que mejoran su usabilidad y, por otro, se ha integrado un traductor de lenguaje SMS (Short Message Service – Servicio de Mensajes Cortos) a español, que permite especificar la secuencia a traducir en lenguaje SMS, además de mediante una secuencia de glosas. El sistema de traducción propuesto se ha evaluado con usuarios reales en dos dominios de aplicación: un servicio de información de autobuses de la Empresa Municipal de Transportes de Madrid y la recepción del Hotel Intur Palacio San Martín de Madrid. En la evaluación estuvieron implicadas personas sordas y empleados de los dos servicios. Se extrajeron medidas objetivas (obtenidas por el sistema automáticamente) y subjetivas (mediante cuestionarios a los usuarios). Los resultados fueron muy positivos gracias a la opinión de los usuarios de la evaluación, que validaron el funcionamiento del sistema de traducción y dieron información valiosa para futuras líneas de trabajo. Por otro lado, tras la integración de cada uno de los módulos de los dos sistemas de traducción (habla-LSE y LSE-habla), los resultados de la evaluación y la experiencia adquirida en todo el proceso, una aportación importante de esta tesis doctoral es la propuesta de metodología de desarrollo de sistemas de traducción de habla a lengua de signos en los dos sentidos de la comunicación. En esta metodología se detallan los pasos a seguir para desarrollar el sistema de traducción para un nuevo dominio de aplicación. Además, la metodología describe cómo diseñar cada uno de los módulos del sistema para mejorar su flexibilidad, de manera que resulte más sencillo adaptar el sistema desarrollado a un nuevo dominio de aplicación. Finalmente, en esta tesis se analizan algunas técnicas para seleccionar las frases de un corpus paralelo fuera de dominio para entrenar el modelo de traducción cuando se quieren traducir frases de un nuevo dominio de aplicación; así como técnicas para seleccionar qué frases del nuevo dominio resultan más interesantes que traduzcan los expertos en LSE para entrenar el modelo de traducción. El objetivo es conseguir una buena tasa de traducción con la menor cantidad posible de frases. ABSTRACT The main contribution of this thesis has been the proposal and evaluation of an automatic translation system for improving the communication between hearing and deaf people. This system is made up of two systems: a Spanish into Spanish Sign Language (LSE – Lengua de Signos Española) translator and a Spanish generator from LSE sign sequences. The first one consists of a speech recognizer, a language translation module and an avatar that represents the sign sequence. The second one is made up an interface for specifying the sign sequence, a language translation module and a text-to-speech conversor. For the translation system development, firstly, a parallel corpus has been generated with 7,696 Spanish sentences and their LSE translations. These sentences are related to four different application domains: the renewal of the Identity Document, the renewal of the driver license, a bus information service and a hotel reception. Moreover, a sign database has been generated with more than 1,000 signs described in four different signwriting systems. Secondly, it has been developed an automatic translation module that integrates two translation techniques in a hierarchical structure: the first one is a memory-based technique and the second one is statistical. Furthermore, a pre processing module for the Spanish sentences has been implemented. By incorporating this pre processing module into the statistical translation module, the accuracy of the translation module improves significantly. In this thesis, the LSE into speech translation interface has been improved. On the one hand, new characteristics that improve its usability have been incorporated and, on the other hand, a SMS language into Spanish translator has been integrated, that lets specifying in SMS language the sequence to translate, besides by specifying a sign sequence. The proposed translation system has been evaluated in two application domains: a bus information service of the Empresa Municipal de Transportes of Madrid and the Hotel Intur Palacio San Martín reception. This evaluation has involved both deaf people and services employees. Objective measurements (given automatically by the system) and subjective measurements (given by user questionnaires) were extracted during the evaluation. Results have been very positive, thanks to the user opinions during the evaluation that validated the system performance and gave important information for future work. Finally, after the integration of each module of the two translation systems (speech- LSE and LSE-speech), obtaining the evaluation results and considering the experience throughout the process, a methodology for developing speech into sign language (and vice versa) into a new domain has been proposed in this thesis. This methodology includes the steps to follow for developing the translation system in a new application domain. Moreover, this methodology proposes the way to improve the flexibility of each system module, so that the adaptation of the system to a new application domain can be easier. On the other hand, some techniques are analyzed for selecting the out-of-domain parallel corpus sentences in order to train the translation module in a new domain; as well as techniques for selecting which in-domain sentences are more interesting for translating them (by LSE experts) in order to train the translation model.

Translating bus information into sign language for deaf people

This paper describes the application of language translation technologies for generating bus information in Spanish Sign Language (LSE: Lengua de Signos Española). In this work, two main systems have been developed: the first for translating text messages from information panels and the second for translating spoken Spanish into natural conversations at the information point of the bus company. Both systems are made up of a natural language translator (for converting a word sentence into a sequence of LSE signs), and a 3D avatar animation module (for playing back the signs). For the natural language translator, two technological approaches have been analyzed and integrated: an example-based strategy and a statistical translator. When translating spoken utterances, it is also necessary to incorporate a speech recognizer for decoding the spoken utterance into a word sequence, prior to the language translation module. This paper includes a detailed description of the field evaluation carried out in this domain. This evaluation has been carried out at the customer information office in Madrid involving both real bus company employees and deaf people. The evaluation includes objective measurements from the system and information from questionnaires. In the field evaluation, the whole translation presents an SER (Sign Error Rate) of less than 10% and a BLEU greater than 90%.

A proposal for an Internet of Things-based monitoring system composed by low capability, open source and open hardware devices

The Internet of Things makes use of a huge disparity of technologies at very different levels that help one to the other to accomplish goals that were previously regarded as unthinkable in terms of ubiquity or scalability. If the Internet of Things is expected to interconnect every day devices or appliances and enable communications between them, a broad range of new services, applications and products can be foreseen. For example, monitoring is a process where sensors have widespread use for measuring environmental parameters (temperature, light, chemical agents, etc.) but obtaining readings at the exact physical point they want to be obtained from, or about the exact wanted parameter can be a clumsy, time-consuming task that is not easily adaptable to new requirements. In order to tackle this challenge, a proposal on a system used to monitor any conceivable environment, which additionally is able to monitor the status of its own components and heal some of the most usual issues of a Wireless Sensor Network, is presented here in detail, covering all the layers that give it shape in terms of devices, communications or services.

Methodology for developing an advanced communications system for the Deaf in a new domain

A methodology for developing an advanced communications system for the Deaf in a new domain is presented in this paper. This methodology is a user-centred design approach consisting of four main steps: requirement analysis, parallel corpus generation, technology adaptation to the new domain, and finally, system evaluation. During the requirement analysis, both the user and technical requirements are evaluated and defined. For generating the parallel corpus, it is necessary to collect Spanish sentences in the new domain and translate them into LSE (Lengua de Signos Española: Spanish Sign Language). LSE is represented by glosses and using video recordings. This corpus is used for training the two main modules of the advanced communications system to the new domain: the spoken Spanish into the LSE translation module and the Spanish generation from the LSE module. The main aspects to be generated are the vocabularies for both languages (Spanish words and signs), and the knowledge for translating in both directions. Finally, the field evaluation is carried out with deaf people using the advanced communications system to interact with hearing people in several scenarios. In this evaluation, the paper proposes several objective and subjective measurements for evaluating the performance. In this paper, the new considered domain is about dialogues in a hotel reception. Using this methodology, the system was developed in several months, obtaining very good performance: good translation rates (10% Sign Error Rate) with small processing times, allowing face-to-face dialogues.

Development of a genre-dependent TTS system with cross-speaker speaking-style transplantation

One of the biggest challenges in speech synthesis is the production of contextually-appropriate naturally sounding synthetic voices. This means that a Text-To-Speech system must be able to analyze a text beyond the sentence limits in order to select, or even modulate, the speaking style according to a broader context. Our current architecture is based on a two-step approach: text genre identification and speaking style synthesis according to the detected discourse genre. For the final implementation, a set of four genres and their corresponding speaking styles were considered: broadcast news, live sport commentaries, interviews and political speeches. In the final TTS evaluation, the four speaking styles were transplanted to the neutral voices of other speakers not included in the training database. When the transplanted styles were compared to the neutral voices, transplantation was significantly preferred and the similarity to the target speaker was as high as 78%.